The benefits of using dental floss for removal of plaque from teeth have been known for many years. Daily flossing is recommended by almost all dentists. Nevertheless, because of the difficulty, inconvenience and messiness involved in manipulating the floss and the time of several minutes that is required, very few people actually use dental floss on a daily basis.
The use of dental floss is a difficult task at best. It is very awkward, messy and cumbersome to hold a length of dental floss on the ends of fingers in one's own mouth. The space limitations are such that reciprocal movement with the fingers is nearly impossible. It is also very difficult to move the dental floss up and down to scrape the sides of the teeth. Moreover, applying dental floss using one's fingers is very wasteful since the terminal ends of the floss are not used and are discarded. In addition, many people have a great deal of difficulty administering dental floss held with fingers. Also, fingers must be inserted into the mouth which can be unsanitary, cumbersome, uncomfortable and distasteful. The user's fingers become coated with saliva and it is difficult to maintain a solid grip on the floss. When flossing with fingers, food particles and saliva are often ejected from the mouth only to land on a nearby surface such as a bathroom mirror.
Consequently, many different dental floss holders have been created to assist in the manipulation of dental floss. For example, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,982,752 (Rodriguez), 3,642,011 (Thompson), 4,753,254 (McCollough et al.) and 2,811,162 (Brody) all disclose elongated flexible arm members that may be squeezed toward one another to fasten and hold in tension a length of floss. Upon their release, the arms apply tension to the floss. Other devices, such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,916,653 (Bodde), 5,105,840 (Giacopuzzi), 2,187,442 (Beach), 1,110,680 (Gamble), 5,123,432 (Wyss) and 5,197,498 (Stewart) apply tension to floss held between opposed pivoting members using scissor-type, tweezers-type, pliers or hand-grip type arrangements. While each of the patents described above is suitable for its intended purposes, for reasons discussed below, they suffer from one or more drawbacks.
Because teeth are often difficult to access, proper flossing is not an easy accomplishment. Often floss must be positioned between adjacent teeth that are contacting one another. Gaining access to the gum area below contacting teeth requires passing the floss through the contact region. As the floss passes through this contact region, it encounters considerable resistance and must be drawn tightly by the user to enable the application of an additional amount of force necessary for passage of the floss through the contact region.
Many of the dental floss holders described above, e.g., those having flexible arms arranged to be squeezed before fastening floss therebetween, appear not to be arranged to enable the application of any additional tension during use as may be required to enable access of floss to gum surfaces located below contacting teeth. Other dental floss holders described above, e.g., those where floss is held between opposed pivoting members using scissor-type, tweezers-type, pliers or hand-grip type arrangements, appear to rely upon manual actuation for application of additional tension.
The dental floss holder of this invention is arranged to enable the application of additional tension to floss during use in a manner that is not shown nor suggested in the prior art. In particular, the dental floss holder of the present invention is provided with an actuating device that is designed to be bitten upon by the user. In response to a user biting down on the actuating device, the dental floss holder will impart the additional tension required to enable passage of the floss between the contact region of two adjacent teeth.